Chapter 10: Everyone Gets an A

The one condition that had to be met before Seto began to work with Ryou was that Ryou had to sign a confidentiality agreement stating he wouldn't reveal to anyone else in the school that his grades were now almost entirely works of fiction. Ryou would still attend school, just as Seto attended school despite having a similar arrangement, but he no longer had to try very hard.

Seto, proving the old maxim that money was power, personally summoned the department heads for each subject, as well as Ryou's classroom teachers, in order to inform them that, like any serious practitioner of any specialized sport, from now on Ryou was going to have to focus more on training than schoolwork. While he didn't directly tell the teachers to invent quality where there was none, he did suggest they use a much more lenient hand when marking, as well as turn the occasional blind eye to projects they might suspect Ryou hadn't actually done himself.

For all the times he'd speculated how Seto could do well at school and run a billion dollar company simultaneously, Ryou now knew the ugly secret. It didn't come cheap, either, though Seto had been able to negotiate the price down to something closer to what him himself personally paid just on the promise of the tremendous potential Ryou supposedly had. He spun a fantastic story about Ryou being a great, intuitive player, a diamond in the rough that needed to be cultivated by fire into the brilliant player it was destined he would be. With practiced ease, Seto shuffled through his most effusive metaphors and persuasive arguments, like the perfect combination of cards in a Magic & Wizards duel, until finally people were literally shaking his hand and thanking him for an opportunity to lie for him.

Ryou, who had been sitting silently beside Seto the entire time, was more than slightly mortified at witnessing the dark inner workings of his once trusted school establishment. The English department head, who Ryou had practically never spoken to in his life, told him in passing that he had always known Ryou was a bright, passionate student with a lot of latent potential. His math teacher said she'd always known he was promising in chess, though she hadn't even known he was in the chess club. Everyone was caught up in Seto's contagious vision of the future. Even Ryou felt a bit lifted off his feet and carried away with his own apparent greatness. However, it took about two seconds with Seto to bring him crashing right back down.

"Don't let it go to your head," warned Seto as the teachers and administrators finished filing out of the room. "There isn't really any such thing as true, innate genius when it comes to chess. There is only hard work and continuous study. It's nothing but a goddamn game after all."

Deflated so abruptly by Seto's harsh, unfeeling words, Ryou was slow to ask the question he'd originally turned to Seto to ask.

"What if someone finds out you're paying for me to get good grades?"

"I'll pay them to keep their mouths shut," said Seto with a shrug.

"And if they haven't got a price?" asked Ryou.

Seto's expression darkened. "I'll make them keep their mouths shut."

This was assurance enough for Ryou, who quickly backed off of the topic.

In order to make the true nature of their new arrangement a little less obvious, Seto officially hired a tutor for Ryou. This was to explain Ryou's improved grades, as well as the drastic cutting down of social time that he was about to suffer. However, Seto made no secret that he was going to personally train Ryou to play chess, since a large part of his motivation for doing so was to show up the rest of the chess team by making Ryou the best player they'd ever witnessed. Each one of them, Jounouchi foremost of all, would sorely rue the day they'd dared to challenge Seto's authority. Still, he remained extremely discreet about offering details that might reveal just how much training Ryou would actually be undergoing. Even if learning chess was hard work requiring hours of rigorous study, he wanted it to look like goddamn magic when Ryou transformed.

The ball really began to roll the second week after Ryou agreed to become Seto's star pupil. Ryou arrived for his first day at KaibaCorp headquarters, where Seto had put aside a small, unused conference room for them on the twelfth floor. In Ryou's left hand, he carried the Italian leather briefcase Seto had assigned him to keep his materials in. This was to be a professional operation, naturally, and Seto would have it look as such. Appearances were often times half as good as results in the business world, and that was a creed Seto lived by through his power-fashion and exaggerated public persona.

"First, we're going to ensure you have a strong foundation," said Seto, handing Ryou yet another large packet of stapled papers. Seto loved nothing as much as paperwork and hated nothing as much as trees. "This is an exam. Leave it with my secretary when you're done."

Ryou sighed as Seto left the room. He pulled up a chair and opened the exam packet to the first page. In a small cup in the middle of the table, there was a supply of pencils, each perfectly sharpened and bundled together neatly. Ryou took one and placed it behind his ear. Doing this let him feel more confident and clear-thinking because he imagined he looked the part. Also, judging by the size of the exam, he might be here for a while, and he needed every small motivation he could find to assure himself that he was up for the task.

Two hours passed in that quiet, empty meeting room. At one point the secretary arrived to check on him and ask him if he needed anything. Outside the door, people spoke and typed loudly on keyboards, going about their normal workdays without any idea that Ryou was there. The meeting room wasn't at all like the ones you saw in movies with glass walls and blinds to shut him out of view. It was just a small room at the end of a hall, a few doors removed from a set of bathrooms and a drinking fountain. For all the glitz and power the KaibaCorp building exuded outside, the interior could be remarkably plain.

Seto arrived once more at the start of the third hour with a coffee in one hand and chessboard under his arm. He seemed momentarily surprised to discover Ryou still there, and asked if he'd fallen asleep before. Ryou promised he hadn't, but he was pretty sure Seto didn't believe him based on the most judgmental of looks that had just been cast at him.

"You do realize this is only the beginning, right?" asked Seto as he stored the chess set in a cabinet against the back wall. "Skip through and answer what you know first, at least."

"I already have," said Ryou in despair. "Perhaps it would be easier to split things into manageable chunks?"

"This exam has on it everything you've supposedly learned in the past few months," said Seto. He had no sympathy to offer. "I based most of it on your own notes. You've seen this before."

"Seen and haven't look at since," said Ryou.

"Well, you're not going to leave until you've attempted to answer each problem," said Seto. "And I mean really attempt, not just throw down something just to make it look like work's been done. You'll stay here as long as it takes."

Ryou, slipping down further in his seat as his lethargy consumed him, sat up and looked at Seto questioningly. He was both shocked and dismayed at the implication.

"You..you can possibly keep me here all night," he said.

"I will literally lock you in this room before I go home if I have to," said Seto. "I have a key."

"But we have school!" Ryou protested. "I can't be up all night doing this stuff."

"Feel free to sleep on your desk all day tomorrow; you'll still pass," said Seto with a shrug.

Ryou, not for the first time and assuredly not the last, questioned what he was getting himself into. He wanted badly to do well in school, and that had definitely been a deciding factor, but more than that he wanted to demonstrate that he could be reliable, a man of his word. He saw Seto allowing him to stay in the chess club, even though he'd forced Ryou to join the team, as sign of a deeper, more patient and restrained nature than one normally gave Seto credit for. Seto had given Ryou the opportunity prove Ryou was more than just someone who simply got by and didn't do work, because for the team's sake he'd had to give Ryou a chance. This rare magnanimous side of Seto's had convinced Ryou of Seto's conviction to improving their school's chess reputation.

It was because of his belief in Seto's good intentions and effort that, when everyone else had turned away from Seto, Ryou had still dared to attend the boycotted meeting. Plus, Ryou had always been softhearted and didn't think Jounouchi was being totally fair by attacking Seto while he was down right after the tournament debacle. Seto needed someone on his side, and perhaps Ryou had to be that person, since no-one else seemed to be stepping up.

"I'll get it done," said Ryou resolutely, knowing there was no alternative. He took up the exam and pulled the waiting pencil from behind his ear, ready to start anew. Seto nodded in approval and left, as this was exactly what he wanted to hear, and there was no further comment necessary.

With a deep breath, Ryou returned to writing. In another hour and a half he was finished and left the exam with the secretary before trudging blearily home to skip his dinner and fall directly to sleep. It was the first of many such long days, and things were just getting started.

Notes:
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Let Me Take a Moment:
Would Seto really lock Ryou in an office room for an entire night because he didn't finish his exam on time? Probably...not. Would Seto lock Jounouchi in a meeting room for an entire night because Jounouchi didn't finish his exam on time? Hell yes.